I’m finding RDR2 really starting to drag mid-game, mainly due to how strongly scripted and generic the missions are becoming, and how there is completely no agency or difficuly to them.

I’ll admit I havn’t played a rock star game since San Andreas - but man, the missions are just so tedious. The difficulty is too easy leading to boredom from lack of challenge, the checkpoints are too forgiving - you pretty much restart right where you screwed up - removing any tension about not dying, the scripts telling you what to do are too direct and limited and don’t allow you any choices or alternative paths to solve the problem (try and take a side-route to your destination and you either get repeated “KEEP FOLLOWING PERSON A” messages or fail the mission entirely for leaving its arbitrary invisible boundaries)- and then half the time your inventory gets limited so you can’t even chose your guns.

I rated the game highly over the first few chapters - but I’m really re-assessing in light of such contrived hand-holding. Did the missions need to be so heavily micro-managed by the game? Surely it could have been possible to have them a bit more open-ended and less dictated, but still keep all the atmosphere and cut-scenes in.

i agree with the missions being very easy. the auto aim is a bit overkill. i am enjoying the story more so than the gameplay.

If you want to do the extra stuff, it can be very challenging. hunting is really challenging when youre looking for perfect pelts some pelts feel absolutely impossible to get perfect.

im still about halfway through as well. im enjoying the characters alot.

Yeah, I’m enjoying hunting, exploring and the robbery missions - and all the random side-encounters that are fairly open ended. It’s just every time I have to get some story missions done to progress things it feels like doing chores.

im at that point where im probably going to barrel through the main story now anyway. i tried a bit of red dead online and it was pretty good. dont know if im hooked though. might turn out to be a massive time sink if youre not paying for currency in it.